Retroviral Activities
by Masterdude21
Summary: After saving Manhattan from its untimely thermonuclear demise, Alex Mercer finds himself in a completely different world, facing a whole slew of nasty problems
1. Chapter 1

**Episode 1: Incubation**

* * *

Bored out of their minds, the three boys had taken to skulking through the trash-littered streets in search of some action. Most people on street in the Docks weren't worth bothering, since they never carried anything valuable on them. Out here, they were all just whores, drunks or homeless idiots. Not worth the effort.

The oldest of the three was "CC" Bota, twenty years old and the most familiar with the area. He pulled his hoodie up higher and took a good, long look around, wondering where to take his pals next.

That was when he heard the sound of trash bins falling over, coming from one of the alleyways.

Johnnie looked at him, a grin on his pale face. "Hear that? Wanna take a look?"

CC snorted. He'd been running with the Azn Bad Boys for a couple of years now. He'd seen his fair share of action. Once you got into a shootout with a rival gang over drugs, other things just couldn't compare anymore. What was mobbing some random junkie in a back alley, compared to _that?_

But Johnnie was a new recruit. Young and impulsive, he was always eager to cause some trouble to prove himself. Beating up some random junkie in a back alley was perfectly fine in his book.

"Dunno," Danh, Johnnie's buddy, replied. Serious guy, didn't say a lot. "Our quota's looking bad. Could be worth a look."

Rolling his eyes, CC decided to humour the two. "Fine. You go first."

The streets were unlit, so he couldn't exactly make out a lot of details, but the three ABB members managed to pin down the noise's direction. They walked into one of the alleyways between two apartment complexes. A stinking, dark passage where even the junkies wouldn't want to hang around.

"What the fuck!" Johnnie suddenly cried. "The fuck's that?"

He pointed at one of the fallen trash bins. It didn't take long for CC to notice what got the kid so spooked. There was something strewn out at next to the bin. It was black, even in the darkness of the alley. Black and streaked with veins of red.

Danh grunted. "Is that a man?"

The black mass was slowly pulsating, shifting back and forth. CC inched closer, slowly reaching for the Glock in the back of his pants. That mass looked disturbingly like a human skeleton. A sucking, popping skeleton made from some sort of…black goo.

But it wasn't a man. The details were off. No organs, no skin, no anything. It lay there, convulsing, as if in pain.

In agony.

"I would not do that…" CC quietly said as Johnnie approached the black –

Did that thing just grow red lines over its "torso"?

"Think a cape fucked someone up here…" Johnnie said as he brazenly knelt next to the mass. He reached into his pocket, dug around and pulled out a switchblade.

A large, red patch suddenly opened. The instant before it was stitched shut with blackness however, CC could have sworn that he saw what looked like a tongue.

And then Johnnie began prodding the shape. "Looks burned, no? Think Lung got him?"

That was when the thing suddenly burst into movement. An elongated limb with long, tapered finger suddenly seized the kid by his throat. He screamed, the black thing shrieked and blood splattered across the ground as Johnnie's entire neck and throat collapsed between those frail-looking fingers, blood and chunks of meat dripping past the blackness and pouring unto the ground.

Then, black tendrils erupted from the emaciated frame, stabbing into Johnnie's body. The skin around his wounds grew black, and Johnnie…

Totally paralyzed, CC watched as Johnnie's body broke apart, shrinking in size and disappearing into the black monster's body, tugged in by a mass of black tendrils.

Black ripples ran along the abomination's frame. For an instance, it looked like pieces of Johnnie's clothes appeared over his body, but they were quickly pulled back into the black mass again.

Horrified, CC pulled out his Glock and began firing at the shape. Danh turned around and for it.

Unfazed by the bullets, the black shape advanced upon CC now. He felt cold, barbed fingers wrap around his face.

CC screamed.

* * *

~0~

_Heat_. His world had been consumed by heat. His body had _burned_ in a flash of the brightest light he had ever seen.

But now, he was cold. Cold, and in incredible pain. He couldn't see, couldn't hear. He could only lie there, heaving and convulsing, every inch of his body coiling and thrashing. He felt aware of something touching his body – something hot and alive – and his body instinctively reacted.

He felt warm flesh tear between his fingers. Blood sipped onto his body as he consumed every inch of the body, pulling into himself. A split-second later, a tidal wave of information assaulted his mind.

_Johnnie Singh. Came to the United States ten years ago. Mother was dead, father pushed drugs at night. Joined the ABB for protection at first. After that, grew more and more immersed with the gang's activities. He began to like the attention and respect he got. _

Alex was desperate to repair whatever was wrong with his body, but even as he added the biomass to his own, he realized that it didn't work. He was still cold, but his body felt like it was burning up. He felt nauseous to his core.

Something was definitely wrong.

Several objects slammed into his body with incredible velocity, tearing through his biomass and disrupting his attempts to repair himself.

Alex almost snarled as he blindly retaliated. His bladed fingers found hot, living flesh and he unleashed a mass of tentacles that speared his assailant. They snapped his neck, tore his throat, crushed his heart. Then, his tentacles began devouring the man, breaking down his entire body. He felt the sickening snaps and crunches through his tendrils for several seconds, before everything was still again.

_Chuan Chen Bota. Born in the United States. Parents were killed by capes. Personally recruited by Lung. _

Alex was snarling now, a whirl of conflicting memories battering his mind. His biomass lurched dangerously and he dropped to all fours again, retching. It was like his insides were on fire. Even as his consciousness reeled with foreign memories and echoes, his body began to shudder, and he curled up into a foetus position.

What the fuck was happening to him? He couldn't move anymore and it wasn't fucking going _away!_

The pain grew worse. It was as if his head was splitting open. He clutched his temples so hard that he could have crushed his skull, had his body had any semblance of strength left.

He had no idea how long he lay there. In time, as he attempted to regenerate himself to his normal form, he became aware of his surroundings. Sound came back to him in roaring echoes as his hearing came back to him. Vivid images of a dark, filthy alley assaulted his brain when his eyes grew back.

Alex had barely gotten his bearings when he heard shouts and…and more gunfire. A series of rapid _thuds _nearing his location.

It had to be Blackwatch. How had they found him so fast? How…how much time passed since the nuke went off?

Dana! Where was Dana?

If he had a heart, it would have leapt to his throat. His sister was all alone and he couldn't defend her.

Alex struggled to fight through the pain, slowly climbing to all fours. He shifted the biomass he just consumed, using them to imitate his clothes. If he could just get some distance, assume someone else's form…

His biomass churned within him, spiralling around…around something bad. The fuck? Something _inside_ of him was doing this?

He didn't have long to swell on that realization. He heard a voice – or was that just inside of his head? It didn't matter, he had to move.

Alex managed to climb back to all fours. He braced himself against a nearby wall, clutching his sides. Movement blurred at the far end of the alley. He glanced over in that direction, saw half a dozen guys barge in. All of them Asian-looking. Armed with things like clubs, machetes, guns and a freaking ninja sword.

Definitely not Blackwatch.

"That's him!" Cried one of them, jabbing a finger in his direction. "That's the fuck!"

Alex all but snarled as he forced himself upright. "…get away," he growled, struggling to contain the sharpened tendrils that rippled underneath his skin. He wasn't sure if he could reform himself if he released them right now.

One of the assholes, holding a shotgun, lazily stepped towards him. "What you say? You not know who you dealing with?"

His biomass bubbled around his skin, warping his clothes with black spirals and tendrils. "I said…"

Rage fuelled his body, lifting the nausea and the pain. He could _move_.

"Get the _fuck_ away from me!" Alex roared.

Gunfire erupted from the assembled gangbangers. He felt shotgun pellets and pistol rounds slam into his body, and he dashed forwards. He closed the distance to the closest gunman in three steps, grabbing his shotgun and tearing it away. One swing of his left arm shattered the man's skull, sending bone, brain and hair splashing across the floor.

A second thug tried to manoeuvre around his stricken buddy, fumbling with a pistol. Alex slammed his fist into the thug's chest, easily tearing through his chest cavity and spine. Several tendrils erupted from Alex' back and skewered the man as he began screaming. The screams didn't last long, as the tendrils crunched and sliced the man's biomass into Alex' own.

A surge of memories and thoughts assaulted his mind once again, but he ignored them in favour of the four remaining assholes still trying to kill him.

Alex lashed out with his leg, kicking one of the thugs hard enough to turn him into a red smear against the wall. Shattered bricks and detached limbs slumped to the ground.

Now_ they _tried to run too, but he wouldn't let them. One, he grabbed from behind and broke his neck like a matchstick. Another he picked up and slammed face-first into the ground, pulping his face shattering his skull.

The last two died equally as messily, but making a lot more noise. Alex had barely broken the two assholes before his body crashed again, and he fell to the ground, groaning in pain as his biomass began throbbing like crazy. It felt like he had just consumed a canister of napalm instead of some nobodies in a stinking alleyway.

He now stood in some sort of open space in-between the buildings. There were a couple of light sources around him. Burning dumpsters, the flame of a lighter…

Alex made out several people staring at him from the other hallways, but his vision was too blurry for him to make out any details. That had happened before, but his vision didn't return to him this time.

Panic kindled as he realized that consuming several humans had done _nothing_ to heal him. He wasn't getting better, and now he was in the middle of fuck-knows where, having just alerted the entire neighbourhood that Zeus was in their midst.

Was it that parasite again? Did it somehow regrow? Or had the Supreme Hunter somehow managed to poison him in one last attempt to spite him?

Shit, how long would it be before Blackwatch found him? Hell, he could barely kill six normal humans without falling apart. A couple of trained soldiers would be more than enough to bring him in right now.

Alex groaned, trying to control his sick body. Rolling waves of pain washed over him, but even that could not drown out the terrible nausea. His biomass was busy forcing something _out_, but the tissue around it kept getting sick, spreading the pain and nausea throughout the rest of his body. He couldn't force the bad tissues out fast enough.

He lingered near the edge of consciousness, darkness lingering in his vision. Eventually, he was shaken awake by the sound of voices.

Alex gritted his teeth and tried to scrape himself off the floor. How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? It was still night, so he had no way of telling.

But one thing he _did _know. There were more people coming for him. Two sets of footsteps, rapidly approaching. He struggled to get back to his feet, clenching his fists.

Fine. He'd give them the same he gave the others -

"Relax," a woman said. "We're not going to hurt you."

_Fuck, that's close. _

Alex had been so busy trying not to lose consciousness that he barely noticed them until they were right on top of him. He shakily rose to his feet, then straightened as much as he dared. He glared at the duo that approached him.

They didn't look like those Asian fuckers. One of them was a tanned woman with shoulder-length hair, the other a man entirely clad in dark-blue body armour. The woman wore a sash and scarf around her waist, patterned after the American flag of all things. She also wore form-fitting army fatigues, much to Alex' distress.

He tensed up as he realized that the man in armour could well be a Blackwatch operative, with the woman a Marine consultant or something. Neither of them wore gasmasks, but that didn't mean shit with Blackwatch.

"Get the fuck away from me!" Alex growled. No government would care about some thugs disappearing, but two armed soldiers was a completely different story. If he didn't kill these guys, there would certainly be more. He didn't need the heat – couldn't get rid of it right now. A low profile was what he needed.

Even then, there was still a nagging suspicion in the back of his mind that kept him from simply tearing these two apart. Blackwatch had a policy of shoot first, shoot some more second, perform an autopsy third.

So why hadn't they tried to put him down already?

The Marine and man in armour halted when he yelled at them. The woman slowly raised her gun in the air, as if showing him that she wasn't going to use it.

Then, the gun turned into a swirl of green and black energy, which then disappeared into one of her pockets.

_The fuck-? _

Alex took a step back when he saw that, stupefied. Even Blackwatch didn't have weapons that fucking teleported. "The hell?"

"Stand down," the man brusquely ordered. "We will not attack unless you force our hand."

He didn't seem to carry any firearms with him, but he _did _hold a halberd in his right hand. A halberd that looked a bit too advanced for Alex' liking.

"Who are you?" Alex demanded, raising his hands to defend himself should the need arise. These guys sounded a lot more sensible than the assholes he just took care of, but if there was one lesson to be learned from Manhattan, it was that looks could be deceiving.

"Armsmaster," the halberd-wielder said in a somewhat irritated tone.

A stark contrast to the tanned woman, who calmly said, "I am Miss Militia. We are local heroes working for the Protectorate."

_Heroes? Protectorate? _

Blackwatch would never use such stupid names. Whoever they were, whatever this Protectorate was, they weren't an immediate threat to him.

Yet.

"You should have known this if you were from around here," the man calling himself Armsmaster continued. "Identify yourself."

Alex took an instant disliking to the man. "Go fuck yourself," he growled. His vision wavered for a moment as another wave of dizziness and nausea overcame him. He wanted nothing more than to leave, preferably without having to worry about witnesses, but he couldn't. Not yet. The knowledge he gleamed from those thugs was blurry at best, and nonsensical at worst. Useless.

As much as he hated it, he had to do a little improvising. And that meant interacting with people without ripping them limb from limb. "Where am I?" He asked. "How long has it been since the infection?"

The two "heroes" exchanged glances.

"He seems pretty out of it," the woman quietly said.

"He _seems _like a nutjob," Armsmaster not-so-quietly replied. "We're taking him in."

Alex narrowed his eyes. He would like to see him _try_.

"Not yet," the woman – Miss Militia – retorted. "You are currently in the Docks, in Brockton Bay," she then told Alex. "There was an armed conflict between the Azn Bad Boys gang and an unknown cape. We are going to make sure you are unhurt, then ask you a couple of questions."

Brockton Bay…what the fuck was that? No, that couldn't be right. He was still in New York, he had to be!

And yet…as far as he understood it, that stuff about the "Azn Bad Boys" coincided with what he managed to learn from those idiots back there.

Alex felt the rising desire to just grab one of the two and consume them. Suppressing that desire was easy enough; the shit they just told him took priority. "Brockton Bay…I don't…I…"

"South of Boston, United States," Miss Militia dryly commented. "Do you have a name? Are you hurt anywhere? This infection you mentioned, where was that?"

"No names," Alex muttered. Boston? How the flying fuck did he end up in Boston?

Hell if it mattered. He felt like absolute shit. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to let someone look at him. Even _if _they meant to take him in somewhere, it had to be better than dying from some fucking parasitic disease in a shit-stained alley.

But then he saw Miss Militia's gaze glide over the bloodstains and the shattered concrete around him. Her expression didn't change at all, like she was used to seeing sights like these. She looked at Armsmaster, who nodded once and began approaching Alex.

"We have medics on the way. Your biometrics are all over the place. Do not resist," he proclaimed.

_Biometrics? Fuck me._

That left Alex feeling unsure. He glanced around, trying to shift the tissues around his eyes into his thermal vision to spot these so-called medics.

It didn't work. He couldn't fucking switch to thermal vision.

Growing seriously annoyed now, Alex backed away from the two heroes. Then, he spotted movement from the corner of his eye.

White-clad soldiers stood in the alleyways surrounding them. They were armed, holding their weapons at low-ready. Weapons with large-nozzles.

_Flamethrowers. _

His instincts kicked in now. Miss Militia approached him now as well, talking about "necessary precautions" and "inconveniences" but Alex didn't listen. He tried changing his fingers to claws, but the biomass in his hands churned and shuddered. His fingers lengthened, but that was it.

Not just his thermal vision. His entire body was messed up. He couldn't shift!

"Just a routine procedure," Armsmaster said, approaching Alex with a pair of futuristic-looking handcuffs. "Do not resist – "

Alex didn't think so. He took a step towards the man and grabbed him by his throat, easily lifting him up in the air with one hand.

Armsmaster's response was immediate. He lashed out with his halberd, its head glowing with a vague hue of electricity. The blade struck Alex in his left thigh, slicing into his biomass.

Alex stiffened as electricity coursed through his body. Fuck, he _hated_ electricity. Growling, he flung Armsmaster away. The man slammed into the ground, eight meters away. He was on his feet a second later, the head of his halberd reconfiguring into a ball attached to a chain.

That was some damn resilient armour.

And Miss Militia moved the instant Alex did, the swirling mass of energy turning into an assault rifle. The first burst of fire struck him dead-centre in his chest, but Alex barely noticed them. Was she using non-lethal ammunition, even now?

It didn't matter. He pounced on her, pulling her rifle out of her hands before grabbing a fistful of her uniform and dragging her up in the air. The fallen rifle dissolved into green-black energy. It lunged and arced around her, before materializing in her hands, now in the shape of a massive taser.

Another point in favour of the non-Blackwatch theory. Also, fucking hell.

Miss Militia was quick to fire the damned thing. Alex felt his body spasm as electricity coursed through him for a second time in way too short a window. Meanwhile, the white-clad soldiers rushed to their aid, their weapons at the ready.

Alex' mind was racing. He could have taken them, easily. Even if he couldn't shapeshift, his strength and durability were still there. He could kill and consume them all and nobody would be any the wiser.

Murder as the first solution. It was what Blackwatch would have done.

It was what the original Alex Mercer would have done.

After everything that happened – after all the people who died during the outbreak – he didn't want to start it all over again. Not when these people clearly had no idea what happened in Manhattan. Definitely not when they posed such a low threat to him.

Alex tossed Miss Militia aside and broke into a flat sprint. The apartment complex was about ten stories tall, proving him with both an excellent vantage point and means to escape.

He sprinted towards the building, gathering tendrils of biomass around his feet. He leapt against the wall, digging his hands into concrete. Black spirals whirled around his hands, anchoring them deeper into the building.

Alex smirked. At least _something _still worked.

Keeping one hand connected to the side of the building, he began scaling it. The black tissue that composed his legs was powerful enough for him to pick up momentum in no time at all. Within seconds, he was sprinting up the building.

Alex braced himself for Miss Militia's gunfire, but surprisingly enough, she didn't even try to shoot him off. His path was linear enough. Hell, her weapon was batshit enough.

He pushed those concerns from his mind once he reached the top of the apartment complex. He climbed over the edge and approached the other end of the roof. There, he found himself overlooking the city.

"Brockton Bay…" Alex reiterated as he took in the sights of the city's night life. True to the Docks' name, he could see the ocean in the distance. He instinctively recoiled upon seeing the massive, oily body of water. "What the hell…"

This wasn't Manhattan. There was no Blackwatch here. Only this…Protectorate and the "heroes" they employed.

Electrified melee weapons weren't exactly ground-breaking, but Miss Militia's weapon was a whole different story. It was almost like her gun had been infected with the Blacklight virus.

That made no sense, of course, but it was the closest thing Alex could think of.

_Blacklight_…

Alex looked down at his hands. His fingers were still black and elongated. Elizabeth Greene…the Supreme Hunter…Randall and Taggart…they were all dead. The largest source of the infection was taken care of. Maybe the US Marines had a fighting chance now. Maybe Dana could get out.

Maybe…

Alex sighed. He had torn a bloody path through Manhattan to find the truth. And now he knew. He wished to hell he could just forget it. He was to blame to everything that happened to the city…whoever Alex Mercer had been, he was still an integral part of who _he _now was. Something more than human. But also something less than human.

Alex was about to leap for the next building when he heard the subtle "twang" of ropes tightening, followed by the sound of metal striking stone. He glanced over his shoulder, only to see Armsmaster almost flying up the roof. His halberd jerked as he landed, the grappling book retreating back into the end of his weapon.

Mercer was reminded of a Hunter, chasing him up a skyscraper as he evaded their pack.

Armsmaster raised the blade of his halberd. His V-shaped visor concealed the upper half of his face, but Alex was pretty sure the man was _pissed_.

The moment he got into the right position, the blade of his halberd broke into several pieces, reconfiguring itself. He fired his grappling hook at Alex, who didn't bother to avoid it.

_Might as well see how tough this guy really is._

The tines of the grappling hook slammed into his stomach like a solid brick. Any normal human would have crumpled under the blow.

Alex barely felt it register. He smirked.

_My turn._

He charged at the self-proclaimed hero, but Armsmaster rolled out of the way and sliced at him with his Halberd.

Alex wasn't too worried. After all, his biomass could handle the claws of a Hunter, which were sharp enough to slice through a Main Battle Tank with ease.

He was surprised, then, when the Halberd passed clean through his chest, leaving him with a large open wound.

A little smirk appeared below Armsmaster's mask, but that quickly changed when the gaping wound on Alex' chest closed up again.

"A regenerator, then," the hero growled.

Alex didn't bother responding. Instead, he pulled his foot up and brought his heel down, hard. The tiles underneath his feet shattered under the impact and the building wobbled dangerously. Armsmaster struggled to stay on his feet. There was a brief window of opportunity, a split-second of weakness, but it was all Alex needed.

He closed the distance in a heartbeat, wrapping his arms around Armsmaster's waist and throwing him over his hips to the floor with enough force to shatter every bone in his body.

That armour of his likely absorbed the worst of it. Alex wasn't going to take half measures; he knetl down next to the man before he could climb back to his feet and slammed his head against the ground, hard.

Not "turning his skull into a piece of art" hard, but hard enough to ensure the man wouldn't be getting up the coming hours again.

Whoever this Protectorate was, they had access to some pretty crazy tech. Shapeshifting weapons, telescoping biomass-rending halberds…it almost lent some credit to their "local hero" claims.

Alex sat down again. His already-heaving biomass gave nasty lurch, turning inwards again. The badness within him was slowly pushed towards the surface of his stomach, forming a noticeable bulge.

Streams of biomass flowed towards the feverish lump of pulsating matter. Alex felt like hurling, and the lump lurched again. His body was positively writhing right now, turning his entire midsection into a whirring blur.

A tentacle slowly protruded from that mass, shoving a fist-sized chunk of flesh out of his body. It felt surprisingly hot.

Alex detached the chunk of biomass from his body and instinctively stepped away from it. Just like that, the dizziness and overwhelming nausea was gone. He looked at the piece of flesh with disgust.

The scientists he consumed filled in the confused blank left behind within his thoughts.

_Radiation. The thermonuclear detonation blasted your body with an enormous dosage of radiation._

His biomass knitted itself together over the hole left in his chest. Slowly, his body reformed itself again. Without complications, this time.

_Complications aplenty. Radiation degrades the DNA of any stricken organism. Mutations – _

Yeah, yeah, whatever…

Alex knew that the voices in his head were more like echoes than actual brain activity. Knowledge and memories fabricated by his mind in an attempt to make sense of the vast storage of information swimming around his skull.

He carried around the last impressions of hundreds of personalities. He had consumed all of their hopes. All of their dreams. All of their nightmares.

And now, he was all alone.

He looked down at the unconscious Armsmaster again. An organization that could make such a bullshit halberd would definitely know about what happened in Manhattan. Even _if _Blackwatch someone managed to continue its communications blackout, this Protectorate seemed advanced enough to know at least _something._

Alex certainly hoped so. He just needed to think of a way to…persuade them to share that intel.

* * *

**~0~**

**Author's Note: **_ Oh dear, a Worm fanfiction, what am I getting myself into?_

_I know, I know. A couple of ground rules to establish that, before the show really gets on the road. _

_1: As always, I welcome all forms of feedback and criticism on my work. If I say/write something demonstrably incorrect, I will revise it. English isn't my first language, so there's bound to be some grammatical mistakes, or weirdly-constructed sentences. _

_2: This is a character-driven story. There will be no character bashing or, blatant out-of-character moments. _

_I'll properly think of Rule number 3 in due time. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Episode 1: Incubation II**

* * *

_Where the flying fuck am I? _Alex Mercer thought as he wandered around the Docks. It was still dark outside, and it didn't look like it was going to get light any time soon. That should make it easier for him to lie low for a while until he got his shit together, but lying low didn't mean a damn when you were completely lost.

He hadn't made it out of gangland yet. After leaving Armsmaster and Miss Militia behind, he had taken a random path through a maze of alleyways to throw off any possible pursuers, before trying to assume the form of the thugs he consumed.

Big fucking surprise, that hadn't worked out. He guessed getting cooked to perfection by thermonuclear fire screwed up his entire biology. The thoughts and memories he consumed, however, were slowly getting less hazy. The occasional snippets of information bounced through his head whenever he looked at something relevant.

Like another group of Asian kids leaning against a wall.

_Food_, went a dark voice in Alex' head he usually ignored.

_Lung_, went the memories of Chuan-whatshisname he tried to ignore.

Lung…Lung was apparently some gangster bigshot. His presence was noticeable in the Docks, yes, what with all the teenage gangbangers skulking around.

Whatever. As long as they didn't bother Alex, he wouldn't bother with them.

Although he was very eager to see if he could shapeshift again, now that he got rid of that radiation…

Alex paused to fish a newspaper out of a discarded garbage bin, expecting to get at least _something _about the mess in Manhattan. Some things you just couldn't cover up, no matter how hard you tried.

Right of the bat, he noticed something was off.

_April 12, 2011? What the fuck? _

Alex just stared at that little header, now sure whether that was a typo or evidence of something really messed up. How the hell did you confuse 2008 with 2011?

…Did that nuke blast him to the fucking future?

Alex hastily skimmed through the paper. Some bullshit about donating to the Protectorate, a couple of advertisements from "Capes" lending their services, and an article warning Asian kids where to go for help if they were targeted by "Lung" or his "ABB".

Lung. Apparently, this guy went after anyone between twelve and seventy looking Asian enough to join his gang. If you were Asian and you lived in Brockton Bay, you belonged to him.

And that was it. Nothing about a freaking nuke going off in Manhattan's coastal waters. Nothing about a massive infection turning humans into monsters, or the enormous quarantine zone preventing said monsters from escaping.

"Are you fucking kidding me," Alex growled.

No way. No way Blackwatch managed to cover up that entire mess. No way –

"Hey!" Someone snapped, and Alex felt someone shove him.

Well, they tried to shove him, anyway. Even though he currently only weighed about as much as two, maybe two-and-a-half people, he barely even felt the impact. It sure didn't send him stumbling, like his assailant properly expected.

Growling in agitation, Alex turned around to face his newest headache.

_More _suicidal thugs looking for trouble. _Great_. And this time, there were three of them.

"What?" Alex demanded, discarding the newspaper. "I'm busy."

"Busy?" One of the guys scoffed. He pulled out a switchblade and pointed it at Alex' face. "Fork up, asshole!"

The other two tried their best to look angry and intimidating. Alex couldn't help but notice that these guys were Asians, too.

So the Docks were their territory, now? They seemed to assume he'd just "fork up" whatever he had on him. They didn't even specify. Must have gotten used to easy victims by now.

That meant they were likely to have some cash on them, too.

Alex smirked. He could do with some money right now.

"What the fuck you laughing for? I said – "

Alex grabbed the man by his shoulders and brought his head down, hard, while at the same time bringing his knee up.

Unmovable limb met not-so-unstoppable head and the results were to be expected. Cows went moo, dogs went bark, skulls went pop.

He felt the biomass of the poor fucker spiral around him, gradually disappearing into his own, but by then he was already taking care of the other morons. The first he punched with enough force to smash his head in, the second one he impaled with a series of sharpened tentacles, smashing his larynx so he wouldn't scream.

No nausea, no pain, no crippling radiation sickness, just the usual searing headache and disorienting identity crisis when their minds became a part of his. They didn't even have the time to scream or call him monster – not physically, at least.

This time, Alex learned a lot more than their general identities. He sifted through years of useless information in seconds, filtering what he didn't need and digging for something useful.

_Lung. Parahuman. Supervillain._

_Protectorate. Parahumans. Superheroes._

_Golden man._

_Hypocrite_

Alex opened his eyes, sighing. Nobody would miss scum like them. They really shouldn't have tried to mug him while armed. Those two heroes, they tried to be nonlethal. They tried to talk and reason. _These _assholes were just a couple of jackals, trying to enrich themselves from other people's misery.

He'd seen enough of that in Manhattan.

Alex paused, then grabbed a hold of the last thug's genetic code. He willed his body to change…and it did. Biomass rippled along the outer edges of his body as it perfectly mimicked the appearance of the last person he consumed.

Finally, some good news.

Safely concealed behind the exterior of a perfectly-normal asshole, Alex continued East, moving deeper into the Docks. He kept his gaze low and avoided looking at anyone, instead keeping himself preoccupied with digesting all the information that now swum around his head.

For the moment, _where the flying fuck am I_ had been solved. It was a city called Brockton Bay, which somehow managed to have an entirely different version of both history as reality than the rest of the US.

Manhattan had slobbering mutants and sociopathic special forces, Brockton had…superheroes and supervillains. The city had a population of about three hundred thousand, a small percentage of which had powers.

Superpowers.

The mind boggled.

Alex felt tempted to just dismiss it as all as the dying hallucination of some amped-up junkie. The things he had seen could be explained with technology…he guessed. Armsmaster and Miss Militia had called themselves "local heroes", not superheroes. That might be an euphemism, or a code or something.

Although that didn't really explain the newspapers.

As Mercer made his way deeper into the Docks, he noticed that his surroundings began changing. Nothing too overt, but the quality of the infrastructure and the buildings seemed to degrade. It was like he stepped from a Green Zone into a Yellow Zone. There were less normal civilians now, and more unconscious vagrants, prostitutes and thugs.

He caught the occasional glare from those people, but they generally left him alone. It wasn't possible that they all caught how Asian his current body looked, so there had to be something else about his appearance. Maybe the hoodie. Or the colours he wore. Something that visually confirmed he was with the Azn Bad Boys.

Problem was, he noticed things too. It wasn't just the quality of the buildings that began to degrade; the people themselves seemed to grow more agitated.

Alex passed by several groups of stern-looking Asians gearing up for a fight. Many of them looked angry, or apprehensive, but there was only ever one guy talking.

It almost looked like they were gearing up for something. A gang war on their own turf? That ought to be exciting.

And exciting it got. After ten minutes of wandering through the Docks, Alex began seeing groups of armed thugs running around, shouting orders at each other and generally making a big deal, like they got some sort of big conflict coming.

The moment Alex reached that conclusion, the memories of those he consumed stirred, flooding his consciousness with images and words.

He caught a glimpse of warehouses, rows of guns and stacks of drugs. He saw a tall man who had his entire upper body covered with tattoos, all of them depicting dragons from Eastern culture.

Alex assumed that was _bad_. He didn't want to get caught up in a turf war; right now, the plan was to lay low and find a way to get back to Dana, preferably without alerting the government that Zeus had popped up somewhere else again.

Of course, it didn't take long for him to be spotted. Some lanky guy with a hoodie of his own beckoned him, holding a pistol in his right hand with his finger already on the trigger.

Blackwatch would be proud.

"Come on," the thug snapped at him in English. "Orders from Bakuda!"

Alex assumed that was bad, too. Bakuda didn't resonate too well with the memories within him. The name seemed to draw a lot of fear. He had no idea why.

"What orders?" He replied, not sure if this was something he ought to know or not.

The Asian man replied with barely-controlled rage. "Fucking heroes come to shit on our business! We need to hold them off until Lee gets here!"

Oh, they were waiting for _Lee_. That cleared things up. "Right, right! Got a gun for me, too?"

The guy looked at him like he just asked him if the sky was green. "The fuck? Didn't you get the message? What's your name, where you from?"

Uh…

Alex provided him with the necessary information, wincing as he stumbled over his "own" name.

The gangster looked at him with blatant suspicion, but a distant explosion distracted him. "Fuck, they are here already? Come on, they need more people at the warehouse!"

"Lead the way," Alex simply replied, his interest piqued by the mention of the "fucking heroes". Apparently, heroes were a real thing in Brockton Bay. That, or everybody had brain damage.

He honestly couldn't tell which option was more likely.

Lanky guy led him past a series of reinforced buildings with armed gangsters running around. Another couple of explosions went off, each one sounding increasingly closer. Eventually, the two of them came to a stop in front of a large, decrepit-looking warehouse.

The area around here smelled…different. Alex expected the chemical whiff of drugs – coke or something – but this place had more of a human scent to it. Fleshy, a bit pungent. Like military barracks where a couple of squads spent a couple of nights binging with showering.

"You inside, now," the flunky snapped, gesturing with his gun at the metal door a couple of meters to their left. "Report to Hyun! She'll give further orders!"

Alex repressed the urge to offer the man a mock salute. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do against the heroes, but apparently, reporting to "Hyun" would make all of his problems go away.

So Alex headed towards the metal door and tried to open it.

Locked. Go figure.

He was about to yell for his new buddy to come back and open the fucking door when someone already opened it for him. The sound of heavy chains and padlocks being undone came from the other side, moments before some big, burly asshole stepped into view.

Bald, covered in tattoos, but not the "Lung" everybody had the hots for. This guy was more fat than fit, and had a sleazy little moustache on his upper lip.

Fatso nodded once and jerked with his thumb at the hallway behind him. A bit puzzled by all this nonsense, Alex still decided to humour the man, quickly stepping inside as a tremor ran through the building.

The door was locked behind him and now he was locked in a foul-smelling warehouse with a bunch of angry assholes. Oh, the memories…

But the vague resemblances to the military bases in Manhattan ended there. Alex rounded the corner and found himself standing on a small flight of stairs overlooking a hangar of sorts. The first floor considered of a metal railing overlooking the bottom floor. Said bottom floor was filled with tables, couches and hastily-built offices. He saw white bricks, piles of money, stacks of handguns and melee weapons.

He also saw girls and young women of varying ages scattered around the warehouse. Dirty rags, expensive clothes. Elaborate makeup, dust-caked faces. Unblemished skin, bruises and split lips. Some were crying, others just stared blankly ahead.

Some were old enough to be mothers, others…not so much.

"What you waiting for?" The fat man said as he approached Alex from behind. "Hyun's in the back. You – "

Cobra-quick, Alex' right arm snatched out and grabbed the man by the front of his suit. He lifted the two-hundred pound thug in the air, walked down the five steps that separated him from the solid concrete floor below, and hauled the man overhead.

His first victim crashed head-face into the floor, producing a crater ten feet wide. The impact kicked up clouds of dust and shards of stone, as well as crushing everything above the man's chest into red paste.

Alex didn't bother consuming what was left. Even as the women began screaming and ducking for cover, he pushed deeper into the warehouse.

Seconds later, all hell broke loose. ABB gangsters began firing at him with their guns, while others rushed at him with knives and machetes, oblivious to what he just wrought.

Alex felt several bullets tear through his chest without doing any harm. The first thug reached him and swung his blade, aiming at his neck.

He easily knocked the blade from the thug's hand, then hooked his leg behind his and shoved him to the ground.

A bullet tore through Alex' head and his head snapped sideways. He ignored the wound even as the wound closed again, lifted his boot and brought it down on the boy's head.

A sound not akin to a watermelon exploding was drowned out by the noise of the concrete giving away underneath his heel.

_That_ got the thugs to back off, unsure of how to react. The door to one of the offices suddenly slammed open, revealing a stern-looking Asian woman with her tied up in a bun. She carried an Uzi in her hands, with a sidearm stuffed in its holster at her hip.

She sneered, then opened fire on him, emptying her entire clip in two seconds.

Alex remained utterly silent as his body rapidly healed what little damage the hail of fire had done to him. Wordlessly, he picked up a pistol from a nearby table. Though the radiation sickness had messed him up big time, he still carried the collective knowledge of dozens of soldiers within his mind. With practiced ease, he gunned down the three Bad Boys standing at the far end of the warehouse, then put a round in Hyun's kneecap.

Then, the fucking gun jammed.

Alex threw the worthless piece of crap away and continued the old-fashioned way. Gangsters turned and ran, but he launched spiked tentacles from his back and speared them through their legs, keeping them from escaping.

One, he tore his throat out with his fingers. Another he decapitated with a simple punch. A third he flung to the ground, before straddling him and delivering a series of one-two punches that swiftly had him punching wet chips into a shattered concrete hole.

He'd seen enough fucked up shit in Manhattan. At least Blackwatch honestly believed they were fighting for the greater good. At least Blaxkwatch attempted to _reach _something with their actions. This? Humans treating other humans like merchandise? Kidnapping the weak and the poor from the streets and condemning them to a life of misery?

He might not be human, but to let this happen would make him truly inhuman.

None of them got out of there alive. Alex hunted them all down, tore them screaming from their hiding spots and ripped them apart.

The woman – Hyun – attempted to crawl away from the slaughter. Alex saved her for last, making sure he got all the other fuckers first. Then, he calmly walked up to her, then kicked her in her side to roll her over, breaking half her ribcage in the process.

Alex straddled her, then proceeded to unleash a flurry of furious punches with increasing cadence. When he felt his knuckles hit the concrete below – which really didn't take very long – he speared her motionless corpse and consumed her body .

A mess of thoughts and memories rushed through his head. Fragmented and blurry, like the others, but this time Alex managed to make more sense of it.

_Azn Bad Boys. Empire Eighty-eight. Merchants. Undersiders. Bakuda. Bombs. Lung. Insects. Protectorate._

Even as he fell to his knees and clutched his head, he encountered the same strange images as before. The memories of the previous ABB gangsters filled in the gaps, and he managed to get a more complete picture of what the hell was going on in Brockton Bay.

This city was filled with heroes and villains. Fucked up people with problems outnumbered those who were willing to make a difference. The gangs outnumbered the local law enforcement, and the amount of capes – _people with powers?_ – was heavily skewed in favour of the villains.

But it wasn't just that. There was something else going on in Brockton Bay. A thick carpet of terror blanketed the woman's last thoughts, but it wasn't caused by Alex himself. A coldblooded bitch like her, heavily involved in human trafficking, scared out of her mind by…someone.

Who? Why?

Alex felt a sudden shift in the air around him. His instinct screamed at him to _move_ and he spun around just in time to catch a knife in his left arm.

His assailant was a man in a black outfit dressed up in an Eastern mask. He wore a belt with knives and other sharp objects fastened to it.

Alex immediately lashed out, landing a crushing jab in the middle of the bastard's face. His skull shattered into fragments, pieces of his mask flying everywhere as his cranium was pulverised. A torrent of red blood spread through the air -

The next second, everything that had once been a part of the man turned into black ash, leaving a thick cloud of dust behind, easily ten feet wide.

_What the -?_

Alex felt something prickle at his throat, He jabbed behind him with his elbow, feeling bones shatter underneath the impact –

Another detonation of black smoke. Alex quickly leapt out of the obscuring darkness and spotted the bastard standing near one of the gun tables, having picked up a gun.

This bastard could fucking telep-

Two shots rang out. Alex felt two solid objects slamming into his chest, but they didn't even penetrate anymore. He had consumed enough biomass to begin filling in the gaps the radiation had left. Even though he still couldn't shapeshift to a more extreme extent, he didn't _need _his Claws or Blade to tear this motherfucker apart.

Alex began advancing on the crazy teleporting bastard. As soon as he came within limb-rending range, the asshole teleported again, leaving a solid copy of himself behind to die at Alex's hands instead.

All the while, girls and young women were screaming and crying. It was _very _distracting.

Lee – assuming that the crazy fucker was the "Lee" the ABB thugs mentioned before – was a slippery bastard. He wasn't fast and he had no means of truly harming Alex, but he just didn't _die_.

He didn't feel like chasing this fucker around the warehouse like this much longer. Those "heroes" were likely to show up soon, and he didn't want to get more involved than he already was.

So he had to wrap this up. A dozen Blackwatch voices whispering in cacophony told him how to achieve this.

Lee appeared somewhere near the ceiling, standing on a platform that overlooked the entire bottom floor.

This time, he held a cut-down rifle.

Three gunshots rang out at the same time. The shot that Lee managed to squeeze off struck Alex in his stomach, actually piercing his "skin" and getting stuck somewhere in the middle.

Meanwhile, Alex's shots struck home. One got Lee in the chest, and the other in his leg. The ABB bastard stumbled backwards and fell, but the body that slammed into the ground exploded into a cloud of ash.

He managed to teleport to safety. Again.

The last echoes reverberated through the warehouse's interior. Then. Then…silence.

Alex found himself standing after yet another carnage. He waited for the moment of satisfaction to arrive.

It never came. These women would still be scarred forever and the system that got them here was still in place. Manhattan had some sort of bullshit information filter keeping the world from what knowing what really happened.

And the criminals had fucking superpowers.

_Superpowers_.

The people he consumed all but verified it. Brockton Bay had a sizeable population of people with superpowers.

Not Blacklight-infected monsters like him, but actual powers. How could –

Alex jumped backwards when the skylight above him shattered into a thousand pieces. The three other skylights met the same fate as several fast-moving combatants breached the warehouse.

Preparing himself for round two, Alex raised his hands in a combat position. But then…

"Hold your fire!" A voice to his left yelled. A voice he recognized, despite having only heard it once before.

It was Miss Militia, the first voice he heard since awakening in this place.

"What the hell?" Alex said, staring at the olive-skilled woman. "What are you doing here?"

Militia quickly scanned her surroundings, her gaze lingering on the bloodbath he caused. She sighed, before her pistol dissolved and turned into a large taser, which she then aimed at _him._. "You killed these people."

_Yeah, no shit._

The team she brought with her fanned out. Some of them were soldiers clad in white, their faces concealed behind faceplates. Others were likely to be _capes_. One of them was a man wearing red body armour, with a visor covering the upper half of his face. He directed the armoured people towards the women.

The other was a guy who looked like he got his fashion sense from the Roman Empire. A gladiator-themed suit with a gold lion helmet and skintight suit

Alex was at a loss for words, so he turned his attention towards Miss Militia. "Put that away," he warned her.

But she shook her head. "You are a parahuman. You used your powers against normal individuals, which is a very serious crime. _Killing_ them with your powers…" She let her voice trail off, as if the very thought itself was too much to speak out loud.

"What about it?" Alex asked. "They had it coming."

"It's not that simple," Miss Militia argued. "Even if they were criminals, it was not your place – not your _right_ – to kill them. Now, we will have to take you in, too."

Hold on, back up. "Take a good look around," Alex shot back. "Do you think these pieces of shit had the right to start abducting women from the street?"

Miss Militia scoffed. She lowered her taser. It was only a fraction, but the gesture was still there. "Of course not. They would have paid for their crimes."

"They _did _pay for their crimes," he pointed out.

Miss Militia cocked an eyebrow, then gestured at one of the mutilated bodies. "Is this your idea of justice?"

Alex couldn't help but notice how the other two capes had turned their attention to him as well. Fuck debating philosophy with some stranger; he knew enough. "Yeah, it is. See those girls over there? The people you are supposed to protect? They're safe now. These fucks won't ever harm anyone again!"

The skin around her eyes creased. Alex wasn't sure what to make of that. "Is that where you draw the line then? What is stopping you from killing again for another crime, justified or perceived? The criminal justice system is in place for a reason."

He scowled. He wasn't exactly a people-person, but he had not taken Miss Militia for the talkative kind. Unless she was just buying time. The voices in his head seemed to agree.

But still…what she said bugged him on a fundamental level. _Of course_ he understood that killing was generally not considered the best case of morality.

What the fuck would he know about morality? He wasn't even _human_, let alone a functioning one. He was a virus wearing the corpse of a sociopath. He was a monster driven by the memories and voices of every person he ever consumed.

Fuck it, he didn't have the patience or state of mind to deal with this. He had to set priorities, solve his problems one step at a time.

"It doesn't matter either way," Alex said, not even bothering to hide his annoyance. "I have shit to do, you have shit to do. Let's – "

The moment he stepped away from that location, Miss Militia fired a warning shot at his feet. "Don't move," she ordered. "Your earlier hostility against Armsmaster and me, combined with your murders here, are enough to warrant your arrest. Will you surrender peacefully?"

Alex rolled with his eyes. One last attempt at diplomacy, then. "A case for self-defence, then?"

Miss Militia seemed to hesitate. "You classify as a Brute. Chances are, the ABB could not have harmed you even if they tried "

Well, she was right about that, but there was no way she could be _sure _about it. Whatever.

Alex didn't wait around to see if those white-clad "hero" soldiers truly carried around flamethrowers or not. He bowed his knees slightly and _jumped. _The roof shattered as hr smashed through it. Miss Militia got a shot off, but it narrowly missed him.

He landed feet-first and went off sprinting, kicking up pieces of stone and glass as the tiles underneath his heels shattered under the duress.

Once he was on the move, Alex' experience kicked in. He hastily put together a plan in his mind, and hurried to create distance between himself and the last point of activity.

He vaulted over a two-story building, slid underneath a rusted old gate into the backyard of some rundown factory and immediately ducked around the corner. Once he was sure that there was nobody around, he shapeshifted.

It was Alex Mercer who disappeared into the old factory. It was an Eastern-looking woman named Hyun who left it again. "She" flicked her hair over her shoulder, cast a haughty look behind her and vacated the area.

White armoured vans raced by in the distance, alarm lights flaring. Protectorate vehicles, Alex assumed. That was one problem dealt with.

…and a big problem added to his rapidly-growing list. He needed to know what the hell was going on in Manhattan right now. This superpower thing could be looked at later. Plenty of powered villains to consume for that. But bypassing a military information blackout? That would take some serious investigating. Too many things didn't check out.

Because seriously, Blackwatch could not have covered up a fucking nuke exploding off the coast of New York. Not while covering up a bloodbath of an infection as well.

Contacting the local heroes didn't exactly work out, since they apparently had a problem with him killing _armed human traffickers_. Granted, he did leave a lot of puddles of gore in his wake and the main problem was more that he used "powers" to kill them than the actual killing itself, but still.

As much as he wanted to work with the good guys – and definitely_ not _against them – that option had flown out the window.

Maybe the local supervillains could offer him some insights. After all, Hyon's memories told him that there were plenty of gangs out here. One of them had to be influential enough to know at least _something_.

Right?

~0~

* * *

_Before Miss Militia could say or do anything else, the cape bent his knees a fraction, before straight up jumping through the ceiling. The thick layer of concrete and metal bars did nothing to hinder his wiry body. Pieces of rock and shards of glass rained down upon the PRT arrest team._

_Hannah sighed. She had a call to make…_

_~0~_

* * *

Director Emily Piggot took a sip of her coffee as her computer booted up. Once it was done, she typed in her personal data and offered the security system her biometrics. The security protocols took a moment to chug through their Stranger/Master filters.

Not that she minded. She had a large stack of paperwork to attend to while the systems activated. Someone took down Lung, and Armsmaster took him in. Problem number one: there were pieces of Lung _missing, _and he had a massive dose of some sort of poison in him. She had a team of medics working around the clock to keep the bastard alive, tying up valuable resources with patching up a very dangerous villain.

Problem number two: cutting off the head of the snake only caused the body to go batshit. While they didn't have as many capes in their ranks as Empire did, they made up for that with sheer number of goons. And what remained of the ABB's leadership was making good use of those numbers.

The phone rang. Director Piggot glared at it. Every time that damned thing made noise, another problem got dumped on her desk.

After muttering a little curse under her breath, she answered it. "Director Piggot."

"_Director,"_ the person on the other end of the line said. "_This is Miss Militia, reporting back from the ABB raid."_

Piggot snorted. Yes, the raid on the Azn Bad Boys territory in the Docks. As if trafficking drugs wasn't bad enough. "I take it the strike was a success?"

"_Yes Director. Only, we encountered…complications."_

Complications. Piggot _hated_ that word. "Go ahead," she warily said.

"_Armsmaster and I encountered a parahuman, two hours before the raid. He came out of a conflict with some gangsters, in a bad way. It was clear he wasn't from around. He turned hostile when we approached him. He ended up knocking out Armsmaster and fleeing the scene."_

Piggot took a moment to take all of that in. A parahuman strong enough to take out Armsmaster after having been wounded in a fight with some ABB thugs? Hah, not very likely. Someone got to him before the ABB did.

"Which parahuman was it? Villain, rogue? What is it exactly he did?"

"_I would classify him as a Brute. Strong enough to lift Armsmaster in the air with one hand and throw him away like a toy. Tough enough to withstand bullets, but I didn't exactly use lethals."_

That sounded like a Brute alright. Standard low-end powerset. A 3, maybe a tentative 4 depending on how he beat Colin. "Anything else?"

"_Yes. He's fast enough to sprint up a building. Armsmaster had him clocked in at fifty miles per hour. Of course, he gave chase. By the time reinforcements got up there, the rooftop was shattered, and Armsmaster was down."_

Director Piggot shook her head. A Brute with enhanced mobility? That was going to be a problem. "Do you have anything to go on? A name, some way to identify him?"

"_Nothing. Just his appearance. Director, that's not all."_

_There's more?_

"_He was present at the target building. He slaughtered the hostiles defending it and managed to drive off Oni Lee. He escaped before we could apprehend him."_

To Piggot, it sounded like Miss Militia just dodged a bullet. Intel suggested that the human traffickers had access to some pretty mean kit. Nothing on tinkertech level, still enough to pose a serious threat to unprotected capes. A Brute strong and fast enough to kill armed gangsters would be strong and fast enough to kill an armed Hannah.

"Strength, speed, toughness…I'll have people on the lookout. Anything else? Any casualties, important details?"

Hannah sounded like she hesitated before replying. "_Director, we didn't see any signs of a forced entry. We breached through the roof like we planned, but all the doors were still locked. A Brute-rating seems appropriate, but I think there might be more to him."_

It sounded like she needed to have a little talk with Colin after this. He would be eager for a rematch, and knowing him, he'd be itching to start investigating this mysterious Brute. "I'll handle it from here. The relieve team should be underway by now. You are to hold the warehouse until it arrives."

"_Understood, Director."_

With that, Piggot slammed the phone on the receiver again, her thoughts racing.

Rogues were nothing new in Brockton Bay. Not everybody with powers was willing to take a side in the ongoing conflict. But this guy deliberately entered ABB territory, murdered a whole swath of their veteran members and drove off Oni Lee.

The PRT wouldn't be only ones after him now. ABB would want his head served on a plate. What if the other villains got word of this, and tried recruiting him? It wasn't likely that the Undersiders would contact him, given the…bloody nature of his takedowns, but that kind of shit got Kaiser as hard as he could get.

She imagined what E88 would be like if they got another Brute in their ranks. One subtle enough to elude Miss Militia not once, but twice.

Director Emily Piggot decided that she did not like that thought very much. This guy might be a murderous asshole, but there were no reports of civilians or heroes being attacked by him. Arresting him was the best option for now, but failing that…

The Director shook that thought from her head. Things weren't nearly desperate enough for the PRT to start approaching rogues, _especially _not ones that left such big mess in their wake.

From then on, the rest of the day proceeded to be just another typical Thursday at work.

~0~

* * *

**AN: **_I didn't think the first chapter would have such a positive response! _

Now the main problem I have is the updating schedule. I only have time to write in the weekend, so the next update might take a while.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: **_it's been a couple of weeks since the last update. A lot of things happened in the meantime. Right now, I'm working from my home, but that might change in the coming days. For now, I'd just like to thank everybody for the overwhelming response. More than two-hundred followers in two chapters' time, that's amazing. _

_Anyway, as with my other stories, I'll be slowly picking up the word count from here on out. I try to average out at 10,000 words per chapter, but we'll see how it goes. _

_~0~_

* * *

**Episode 1: Incubation III**

One benefit to being able to sprint up a skyscraper in seconds was the view that that accompanied it. Watching the sun rise over the devastation wreaked in Manhattan was soothing, in a strange way. Insane viral outbreak or not, the world continued. That thought had given him hope, especially during the first few days of the outbreak.

But that was before he discovered the truth. Now…now, Alex looked at the rising sun and wondered where all the logic had gone. Because it sure was hell wasn't here.

He had seen a woman shapeshift her machinegun into a taser and back again. He had seen a man scale a skyscraper with a halberd. Fuck, he had seen a man teleport, leaving behind a corporeal body that had to be killed before it exploded into ash.

And people acted like it was the most normal thing in the world. Fucking heroes and villains fighting each other with goddamn superpowers!.

Alex felt the urge to grab something and tear it limb from limb. All the other sources he found said the same thing. He was in Brockton Bay, April 2011.

Apparently, Brockton Bay had an entire different calendar than the rest of the world. Go figure.

The whirling memories within his mind kept whispering at him, kept telling at him that there was an explanation, but Alex didn't listen. He refused to listen, because if he did…

Alex climbed to his feet. It was no use overthinking this. Racing back to Manhattan, while tempting, wasn't an option right now. Place would be sealed up tight, no way getting in on foot. That left hijacking a military vehicle that just so happened to coincidentally head _into _the dangerous quarantine zone, or swimming.

He involuntarily tensed up at that thought. _Water…_

No, Manhattan was off the tables. He needed some information first, get some context to the swirling mass of thoughts and memories. He needed to find a place where even the government couldn't control the information flow. A place where the world's deepest, darkest secrets were dissected and laid bare for all to see.

Alex hoped that the internet would be good enough.

It took some searching and a lot of effort, but eventually Alex shapeshifted into the form of a plain-looking young woman he had once consumed. She'd been grabbed by infected, who began tearing her apart with their bare hands. Back then, he had figured he was doing her a favour.

Using that form, he strolled around the more normal part of the city, away from the Docks. Once there, Alex felt the urge to form a couple of extra eyes, just to keep track of everything that was going on around him. If superheroes and supervillains were part of everyone's daily lives in this city, it'd make sense that they also influenced Brockton Bay's culture in some way. Merchandise or public campaigns or something along those lines. Alex expected to hear at least something that verified what he had witnessed.

Which he did. Sort of.

His enhanced hearing picked up one conversation in particular that used a phrase his memory-box couldn't quite place.

_Wards_.

Alex stopped, listening intently to the little talk the two older guys were having. Something about a Wards program and how it needed more funding.

Funding…because they were effective for their age?

Not wanting to attract any suspicion, Alex kept walking. Wards…the age thing kinda suggested these Wards would be very old, or very young. He seriously doubted the former, but the latter somehow seemed…weird. Irresponsible, even to someone like him.

Why send kids to fight assholes like Lee? The guy could fucking teleport. Shit, he even left a clone behind as he did. If he stuffed a grenade in his vest he could effectively function as a multi-suicide bomber.

Which, again, begged the question why this shit wasn't in the news.

That was just another question he needed answered.

With the cash he took off those ABB thugs, Alex walked into the nearest internet café and paid the bored woman sitting behind the counter. She barely looked up from her phone as she took his cash, then pointed at the row of tables in the back of the room.

Alex picked the one in the far corner and booted it up. First order of business: find out if _anyone _reported on the nuke going off near Manhattan. Even if Blackwatch managed to play it off as a weapon test, there'd be some sort of public statement, wouldn't it?

Wrong. The internet had nothing – _nothing _– about the nuke going off. Neither did it say anything about an infection, or even a quarantine zone.

And that didn't make sense. Detonating a nuclear weapon on US soil, so close to Manhattan of all places, would result in an unprecedented PR nightmare. Any attempts to cover that up would result in incredible friction against the government, not to mention how the US's allies would respond to the detonation of said nuclear weapon.

And the date was still fucking wrong.

That unpleasant voice in the back of his mind was back. Not one of the voices he had taken for himself, but a vague thought that kept whispering the same thing over and over again.

Alex was desperate to ignore that one and kept browsing. Superhero this, supervillain that…the other states had them, too. Christ, even other _continents _had their own superheroes. Europe, Asia, Australia…

The time difference could be explained away with busted regeneration, but Alex just couldn't justify the sudden appearance of superpowers.

His search brought him to a website called Parahumans Online. Some sort of forum where people discussed heroes and villains. It also had a wiki page, with all the available information neatly archived.

That included individual superpowers.

Now _that _got his interest alright. What he needed was someone powerful, someone who knew everything that happened around these parts. It couldn't be someone in the PRT, as he didn't really feel like assaulting and consuming a hero. Especially not now that he saw the villains outnumbered the heroes. Apparently choosing crime was too lucrative.

The fucked up part? Alex wasn't even surprised. He had learned enough about human nature during the infection. Hell, he had been there himself.

But at least he _tried_. It would be so easy to prey on the common people for what you needed. With the right set of superpowers, you could rape, pillage and murder your way across a city, with nobody to stop you.

Alex pushed those thoughts from his mind and continued searching. He read about the different superhero classes, which explained why Miss Militia called him a Brute. With this context, the memories of the ABB gangsters made more sense now.

On a hunch, he typed in "Lee" and "ABB", and clicked on the first page that appeared.

There the fucker was. Oni Lee, an asshole with a demonic mask with a nasty grin and a black bodysuit complete with murder tools. His power was a mix between duplication and teleportation. Apparently, the body he left behind remained a pain in the ass for up to ten seconds.

Shit, he _did _use his powers for suicide bombing. With grenades, no less.

_Fucked up minds think alike, right?_

Alex gritted his teeth. _Shut up_.

The guy had even been labelled a sociopath by the PRT, just like the original Alex Mercer. Except this guy had a warning saying that he was exceptionally violent and shouldn't be approached. As far as he was aware, Alex Mercer was never actually violent.

Just a cruel and vindictive man who condemned the world out of sheer spite.

Moving on.

Lee was one of two lieutenants serving the ABB's founder. The other was a woman named "Bakuda". A tinker – people who could make strange stuff – and her specialty was bombs.

Alex took an instant disliking to her, too.

That left Lung. A big guy. Something about fire and transforming. Nothing too important there.

Alex guessed that a petty gang like the ABB wouldn't have the people he needed, so he continued.

Empire Eighty-eight. White supremacists with a lot of influence and power. The current leader was a guy named Kaiser. The picture at the top of the page showed a grainy still from a security camera. An elaborate suit of metal, complete with a crown of blades. He could create metal objects from surfaces around him.

How the fuck did that work?

The scientists in Alex' mind cried out in anguish. Alex himself merely sighed. If these people could break the laws of physics that easily, chances are one of these capes could very well kill him for real. He needed to be more careful.

The Empire was powerful, yes, but nothing suggested that they knew things others shouldn't know.

Alex felt the urge to smash the computer. He couldn't make sense of all of this! None of these villains looked like they had the position to help him. What was the point -

He paused. Maybe he was looking at this the wrong way? He had been looking for free information. But if he approached this in another way, tried a little investment…

The PRT had the information he needed, he was sure of that. With what he now knew of the ABB, he could eliminate the entire organization. Bakuda was just a couple of terrorists stuck in the body of an Asian woman, while Oni Lee required a single well-placed bullet to neutralize. That left just Lung.

Easy pickings. Certainly the PRT would the interested in that knowledge, wouldn't they?

It was certainly worth a shot.

The knowledge he got from the ABB guys told him that the PRT had their headquarters in the city. It could be reached by public transport. According to the maps, there was a bus stop nearby.

Alex counted the money he had left. Four-hundred and sixty bucks, give or take. Not nearly enough to buy the information he needed if this thing went south. It was, however, enough to see him through for the next few days. If his visit to the PRT turned out to be a bust, he'd simply change shapes and lay low for a while, thinking of plan B.

Plan B would likely involve some violence.

The bus took him through the city's centre. It would take more than half an hour to get him there, so Alex sat down in the back, next to a window, letting his thoughts wander.

The realization just now hit him. It was 2011. He had been gone for three years.

If his regeneration really had taken three years, the whole mess in Manhattan had already been dealt with. Dana would have moved on with her life…or Blackwatch had already murdered her and covered it up. A home invasion gone wrong, or…some sort of accident, tragic but totally mundane.

His biomass lurched at the mere thought. He had put her through hell, and he hadn't even thanked her for standing by him all that time.

Was there even a point in heading back? Dana probably thought he was dead. She would have mourned him, but she would have moved on. Moved on without him.

Christ, the way she looked at him when she found out…

The bus stopped directly in front of the Parahuman Response Team East North East headquarters. Once Alex got off, he realized why. The entrance to the building was swarming with civilians. _Tourists_. Some entered the building, others left, but most just milled around taking pictures.

The exterior of the building was all windows, fitted with bars. Good exit strategies. They were probably bulletproof, but that wouldn't stop him.

Still wearing his civilian disguise, Alex entered the building. He shot a quick glance around, the military commanders within his consciousness interpreting the information within half a second.

Six guards spread through a fairly large atrium. White armour, the same guys he saw in the ABB territory. They had the same muzzled weapons, which meant they weren't actually flamethrowers at all.

_Containment foam,_ the ABB thugs whispered at him.

One receptionist at the desk, probably two emergency buttons within her reach. Locked doors all around, containing more reinforcements. The upper tiers could conceal snipers.

Alex approached the receptionist. As a harmless-looking young woman, he probably didn't appear as a threat to the receptionist. She still stared at him as he approached her however. He didn't know a lot about human facial expressions, but hers didn't exactly look at ease.

Was it something he wore?

Ah. He forgot to emote at her.

Alex struggled for a bit, then managed to flash the woman a little smile.

The woman remained ill at ease.

Well, that was his whole bag of tricks. Fuck it.

"How can I help you?" The receptionist asked.

Her left hand did hover over what Alex presumed to be an alarm button.

"I represent someone who is willing to offer the PRT their services," Alex began, sifting through the memories in hopes of encountering something business related. "Starting with the distribution of valuable information. If you could…" Some of the more morally questionable scientists he consumed began whispering obscure terms and hints at him, but he had a hard time making any sense of them. "Refer me to either the Director or someone else capable of making that call?"

Alex presumed that this didn't usually happen to the receptionist; she frowned, then tapped something into her console.

"Your name?" She asked.

What name did he trust the PRT with? He couldn't rule out their connections to Blackwatch, so any pseudonyms they were familiar with were right out. Thing was, he didn't feel right with offering some random name he'd forget before the end of the day, either.

"No names. Not until my client knows the PRT is willing to meet arrange a meeting," he replied.

The receptionist muttered into her headset about a stranger wanting to meet someone to establish an alliance.

And the guards, meanwhile, were keeping a close on them. Maybe it was usual for outsiders to work with the PRT if they were already dropping words like "alliance", but they weren't stupid enough to believe him on his word.

Huh. Maybe the PRT was actually competent at their job.

"I can schedule an appointment next Thursday. The Director is a busy woman, after all."

Alex did his best to smile again. He still wasn't sure why it was supposed to put people at ease; all he did was bare his teeth at the woman. " Ah, I'm afraid that won't work out. My…client does not have much time, but they are capable of fielding a lot of power in the time they _do _have. And since they have chosen the PRT to offer their services _for the moment_, I would appreciate it if the PRT could…expedite the process."

The woman blinked. The penny dropped. "Of course, I understand."

Alex waited as patiently as he could while the woman typed in a different string of commands, then spoke into her headset again.

"Please take the third lift, to the left over there," she told him. "Someone will meet you."

_Finally, some progress._

Alex didn't bother to continue the social charade. He turned around and marched towards the elevator, He didn't know which floor he had to go, but he had the feeling that either of the two soldiers following him did.

The elevator seemed to be made from some sort of bulletproof glass. Almost completely see-through. Alex saw it descend to the ground floor, before soundlessly sliding open. The technicians within his consciousness couldn't make sense of what he was seeing.

Funny. They drew the same blank with Armsmaster's tech. The guards remained silent as they escorted him up. Only a couple of seconds went by as the elevator ascended, but the thing went so fast that he had no idea which floor he ended up at. No inertia, no sudden braking, nothing. He guessed he ended up on the fourth, maybe the fifth floor.

The guards got off, meeting up with the other two guards who waited for them as soon as the doors opened.

And they didn't look friendly.

"Ma'am, do you have any weapons on you?" One of them asked.

Alex fought the urge to smirk. _You've got no idea…_

"No, I do not," he replied.

"Could you take all your items out of your pockets?" He continued.

_Person search_, a Marine in his thoughts murmured. _Looking for anything dangerous. _

"You are free to search, but I don't have anything on me," Alex retorted. He didn't have the _time _for this, damnit…

They searched him nonetheless. Alex struggled to contain his biomass and keep the tendrils from instinctively lashing out at the sudden contact. Killing the PRT's guys wasn't exactly the best way to earn their trust. He also couldn't exactly blame them for being this thorough, given that some of their enemies could fucking teleport.

As he underwent their security measures, he heard someone else approaching them. Alex glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see that it was Armsmaster himself, being surprisingly stealthy despite his armoured boots. There was not a hint of stiffness in his stride.

_Tough son of a bitch._

"I'll handle it from here," he growled. The soldiers casually backed off, as if this was a usual thing for them.

Armsmaster looked more closely at the virus-in-disguise and "I procured a room. Follow me."

That halberd of his was clamped to his back, somehow. Retracted to six feet long, then segmented in two parts to fit.

The man stopped in the middle of the hallway in front of a steel door. It flung open the moment he stopped. He turned around and gestured for Alex to enter, which he did.

Once he passed through the door, Alex was instantly reminded of the morgue he woke up in. The room was more of an interrogation cell than anything else. No windows, steel walls and a large, bulky table in the middle of the room.

"Sit down," Armsmaster ordered.

Alex couldn't help but notice that the man himself remained standing. He glanced down at the metal chair. It _looked _like it could hold his weight. He didn't weigh more than a couple of people right now. Four…maybe five?

He sat down very carefully, ready to spring up if the chair couldn't handle it. A young woman shattering a steel chair by merely sitting down would raise a lot of questions, after all.

The thing creaked, but thankfully it held.

"You proposed an alliance between the PRT and the people you represent," Armsmaster said, the second Alex was seated. "Talk."

Alex cocked an eyebrow at that. And people gave _him _shit about bad social cues. "My employer has valuable information about the Azn Bad Boys gang, as well as the resources to act in it." He paused for a second, wondering how far he could go with this act.

_Fuck it. "_Given how unsuccessful the local PRT has been in combating them, my employer is even willing to eliminate the ABB leadership outright."

"Who is this employer?" Armsmaster asked.

"They would prefer to remain anonymous. At least, until an agreement has been reached."

The hero could have been chiselled out of stone, the way he responded. "You said your employer is willing to take care of the ABB leadership themselves. I'll assume that means they have powers on their own. The PRT does not condone capes killing capes unless a kill order has been given."

_Shit. _Miss Militia had been adamant about that as well. Why did that matter? Why bother keeping your enemies alive, especially if they were so dangerous?

No matter. Crippling a couple of fuckers instead of killing them was _nothing _compared to finding out what the hell happened in the three years he had been out.

"Non-lethal takedowns are an option," Alex slowly replied, carefully mulling over each word he spoke. He had the collective knowledge of dozens of relatively normal, relatively social people at his beck and call. Why the hell was this still so difficult? "With the information my employer has, the complete collapse of the ABB can be guaranteed in two, perhaps three days."

_That _got a reaction of the man. It was subtle, but Alex presumed that human lips weren't supposed to tighten like that. "Two days? The complete ABB gang?" Armsmaster replied, incredulous. "And what does thus…employer…require of the PRT?"

Alex forced himself to remain calm, to stifle the excitement and anxiety that welled up within his abdomen. "Live footage from Manhattan, New York. Live footage that is not censored, not doctored in any way."

Armsmaster crossed his arms. "Why?"

_That's not fucking important! _

But Alex checked his temper. Patience. He was so close. "That is for my employer to know. Just understand that something happened in Manhattan three years ago, something that should have left its mark on the world."

He eagerly observed Armsmaster's response to that one. Surely he would understand what that meant? A nuke. A big, fuckoff nuke going off around the coast of Manhattan. Even if the civilians could be blocked off via the information blackout, surely the PRT, with their fancy tech, would know something?

"Your employer is willing to remove the ABB gang, nonlethally, for live, unedited footage of Manhattan?" Armsmaster said, sounding too sceptical for Alex' liking. "You understand that this sounds too good to be true."

Either the man knew and pretended otherwise, or he genuinely had no clue what was going on. "Armsmaster, this is the deal as my employer wants it. He will take care of the ABB leadership, and even the rest of the gang, if you allow him access to the aforementioned footage."

The man in armour was silent for several long moments, his face impassive behind his visor. "I am not in a position to approve such an alliance myself. I will have to speak to the Director about this. Won't take more than a couple of hours. Do you have a number we can reach you on?"

A phone. He hadn't needed one the past weeks. Probably wouldn't need one the next few days; he'd wipe out the ABB, finally figure out what the fuck happened the past few years and then…

Alex had no idea what then. He'd figure that out on the fly. "Phones can be traced. I'll be back, tomorrow around the same time."

"I can't guarantee anything," Armsmaster replied as Alex stood up from the chair. "The PRT is not in the habit of hiring rogues to take care of its problems."

Alex sighed. _Fuck me…_"We don't care whether the heroes or the villains get the intel, Armsmaster. We can sweeten the deal by going after the Merchants or Empire Eighty-Eight for you, or we can call the deal off and find someone who _is _willing to work with us."

Armsmaster just stared at him, not at all fazed by the unspoken threat. "Understood. If that is all?"

"It is."

Without mincing words, Armsmaster marched up towards the door. Again, it opened as if someone had been waiting for his approach.

The two of them remained silent all the way back to the elevator, whereupon two of those white-clad soldiers took over for him. After a short, silent trip on the glass elevator, Alex found himself stepping out into the lobby again.

_Well, that could have gone worse._

This was different from sneaking into military bases. It was a lot of effort for a relatively minor thing, but he couldn't jeopardize Dana. She was all he had left, not just as his last link to humanity. Maybe that Blackwatch officer- the first human he ever consumed – used to have a little sister himself. Maybe that was he cared so much about Dana Mercer, whereas Alex Mercer had been perfectly fine with letting her die when he released the virus.

If she was still alive, she probably wouldn't need him in her life anymore. Would she?

He just…he needed to be certain. That inevitable conclusion simmering in the back of his mind became harder to ignore every hour he remained in Brockton Bay. Sooner or later he'd have to confront it.

But for now, that'd be later. He had twenty-four hours to kill.

As Alex wandered the streets, taking in the less-than-impressive sights, he wondered how he was going to handle this. His best-case scenario would be getting the information without ever revealing himself to the PRT. They took that no-killing thing very seriously, even though the gangs here gave less than a shit about that.

After some digging, he learned that teleportation wasn't the only bullshit ability some of those guys had. There was this guy, Hookwolf, who could so something with his body. Turn it into a whirring mass of blades and fishhooks.

Alex had done his fair share of slicing and dicing himself, but that was always to kill. The nature of his…powers…made those kills a bit brutal, yes, but it was never his intention to cause unnecessary suffering. Guys like Hookwolf used their powers to straight up hurt people. Mutilate them, scar them forever without finishing them off.

But no, killing a couple of shithead sex traffickers was _bad_. The mind boggled.

That meant making a deal without showing his true face, while taking out one, maybe two superpowered gangs without killing anyone, and somehow making sure the footage they showed him was real.

Alex had to keep reminding himself that simply dropping by Dana's apartment in New York was not an option, as much as this whole city _screamed _at him to get out.

The hoodlums in his mind told him exactly how the layout of the city and its territories worked. He had some cash left, but the only thing that'd be good for was to buy a place to sleep overnight.

What did people usually do to spend the time? Eat, drink, read? He didn't need any form of sustenance and reading…

Well, the Alex Mercer persona used to be a scientist. He enjoyed reading books for fun, which meant that _he _would enjoy reading too, wouldn't he?

He gave the idea some thought, but decided against it. What was the joy of reading when you already had the cumulative knowledge of hundreds of books swimming around his head? That would be like watching a movie you already saw the night before.

Instead, Alex decided on scouting out more of Brockton Bay. He might be spending more than just a couple of days here, and he wanted to be familiar with the city's layouts when it came to a prolonged battle.

Constantly moving, constantly looking over his shoulders. He had been forced to adapt those habits from the moment he woke up in that morgue, the moment he had been "born". His life was a constant struggle for existence. Maybe it was because of that permanent state of enforced paranoia that his senses had evolved to be as sharp as they were now. Perched atop one of the taller buildings in the Boardwalk, Alex caught the distant thump of an explosion in the distance.

Knowing that explosions were relatively uncommon outside of Manhattan, Alex decided that he might as well take a look, see what was going on.

The problem with things like explosions and gunshots – one that few people outside the military actually knew of– was that sound had an annoying tendency to echo away in strange directions. Running away from the sound of gunshots could very well lead to directly _towards _the gunshots because of the way the airwaves travelled. That made zeroing in on a location based on _one _sound a bitch.

Fortunately – and Alex used that term very loosely – the explosion was almost immediately followed by screams and other loud noises. Maybe a mile or two away.

Though his body was still fucked up from his close call with that nuke, he still retained his ability to glide. He leapt from the rooftop, his biomass already shifting and changing for the most aerodynamic shape. Like that, Alex made it towards the source of the disturbance in relatively short time, but by that point, the PRT had their people on site as well.

Alex landed on a building at the side of a wide, busy street. The PRT put up a makeshift roadblock and had people in place to wave the civilians away, but from the looks of it, there were still people trapped on their side. As Alex crept closer for a better look, two large vans raced by the white-cad troopers there from a side-street, heading towards the conflict. They were no doubt filled to the brim with reinforcements.

Seconds later, the staccato rattle of gunfire went off. It couldn't be much farther than a block away.

More ABB assholes? A Merchant deal gone wrong?

Alex pulled up his hood and covered his face with flat tendrils of biomass. He didn't want people recognizing him on the fly. He was willing to work together with other people, yes, but not to a public degree.

He leapt from rooftop to rooftop, following the speeding vans as they raced towards the conflict. There were more people on the street there, too. Most of them were civilians, but some carried things like clubs, knives and pistols. Their attention was focused on something Alex couldn't see yet.

The vans approached a t-intersection. They were just about to head left when all of a sudden something large and blurry intercepted them from that direction.

The lead van couldn't stop in time and slammed into the thing, which looked like some sort of blob made out of hooks, needles and serrated blades. Those blades moved like the teeth of a chainsaw, sliding and grinding over and past each other, like a metal hedgehog in a blender.

Whatever the thing was, it must have been _heavy._ The van came to a total stop while the walking chainsaw merely skidded backwards several feet.

Two other people followed the chainsaw-man out of the alleyway, carrying large bags with them as they gave the crashed vehicle a wide berth. One of them was a tall, pale man who spent way too much time in the gym. His forearms and calves were wrapped in iron chains and he wore a white-blue tiger mask to hide his face.

The other one was a young-looking girl with a lean body and a metal cage covering her face. She leapt out of the way just in time for a figure in a skintight uniform leapt down from a nearby rooftop, landing in their midst. She moved fast, way too fast to be a normal newcomer kicked the heavy-built man in the chest, sending him flying into a wall.

Another parahuman, then.

Great. He wound up in the middle of a Cape fight.

The real problem was the PRT guys caught in this mess. The chainsaw-man was on the crashed van in a heartbeat, ripping one of the doors out of its hinges and darting inside.

What followed was awfully similar to Alex breaching a tank. Screams, blood except for the laughter.

_Now _he recognized the blender on legs. This was fucking Hookwolf.

These two were Empire guys .Nazis, wolves among sheep in Brockton Bay.

The hero fighting them didn't exactly fare well. Her surprise attack saw her kicking the shit out of that bulky man, but the woman with the cage for a face had the reflexes of a D-Code. She evaded blows that Alex didn't even see coming and dealt out hits just as well.

Then, tiger-face guy turned around, scanned the rooftops and straight up met Alex's gaze.

How did he-?

Ah. Fucking superpowers.

Alex leapt from the roof and landed a couple of meters behind the other van. By that point, the PRT troopers inside had managed to vacate their own vehicle, but that only got Hookwolf's attention. He casually strode out of the wrecked van, now in a more human form.

He was a big, well-muscled man, as tall and wide as Alex' armoured form had been. He was covered in blood and tattoos and his hair was long and thinning. His face was covered with a metal mask. He rushed the PRT troopers, moving faster than a man had any right to. As he moved, metal seemed to grow out of his skin, forming a macabre maze of spikes, hooks and blades. He brought one arm back – his hand now dissolved into a mass of hooks and serrated teeth – and uttered a low, throaty bellow.

That was when Alex stepped in the way and caught Hookwolf in the neck with a clothesline. The villain slammed into the ground with enough force to crack the pavement.

"Back off," Alex told the PRT men, who seemed just as likely to shoot him as the villains.

All of a sudden, the woman with the skintight uniform stood next to him. Alex noticed how the circuit-like lines on her uniform now glowed a bright, electric blue.

"Hey! You got powers?" She shouted.

Alex guessed she was one of the good guys. "I'll handle him," he growled back.

Before the woman could respond, the other guy leapt atop the wrecked van. What happened next could best be described as some sort of explosion, one that knocked the costumed woman on her ass.

The asshole atop the van formed some sort of shimmering claw around his raised hand and turned to look at Alex. "Thought I smelled something weird."

With a snarl, Hookwolf leapt back to his feet. Rage contoured his visage as he ran his eyes across Alex' body. "You just made your last mistake, motherfucker!"

"Watch out!" The hero yelled as that other girl got into close quarters again. "Hookwolf means business!"

What the hell? She could barely hold her own against these superpowered flunkies and she still thought it necessary to warn _him?_

Hookwolf snarled and lashed out at Alex, whipping his oversized claw around in a clear attempt to slice him in half diagonally.

A trick, ironically enough, Alex had used himself many times before. He quickly sidestepped the blow, then flinched when a spear erupted from Hookwolf's flank to spear him in his gut. He quickly twisted around and caught the spear between his elbow and his knee, shattering it into pieces.

Now, he was faced with a bit of a dilemma. Even in a world with superpowers, his specific set of "abilities" made him one of a kind. Blackwatch would zero in his description in a matter of minutes. Until he knew what happened in New York the past three years, he didn't want to risk that.

No shapeshifting, then.

Before Hookwolf could Swiss-army-knife any further, Alex landed a solid jab on his face. Not enough to pulp his brain, but definitely enough to put an armoured soldier into a coma.

Hookwolf staggered backwards, his hands reaching up for his face. He growled, even as more blades and hooks erupted from his forearms.

"The fuck-?" Alex muttered. More violence, then. He didn't allow the villain to recover. He sprinted at Hookwolf, slamming into his sternum and tackling him into a building. They crashed through the wall and slammed into the ground together, with Hookwolf punching and slashing at him with his forearms.

Alex, unable to fully encase himself in armour, opted to simply strengthen his biomass instead. Dense enough to block bullets and protect against the blades of the Walkers. He blocked a wild hook, grabbed the offending limb with one hand and took a handful of Hookwolf's tattered shirt with the other. Then, he began redecorating. He slammed Hookwolf through the window, dragging him through the broken frame and into the side of the wall. Then _through _the wall. The martial artists and military close quarters experts in his mind told him exactly where to lay down the pain without killing him.

The man's shirt and sin hung in tatters from his body, but beneath the skin, there was no blood or muscle structure. There were only bands of metal and coiled up blades. Knives and hooks in the general shape of biological tissues.

Alex made a mental note to put Hookwolf into Hunter-level durability. As the man's body unhinged further, revealing more blades and hooks than before, Alex flung him to the ground. He straddled the man, delivering a series of one-two punches with increasing cadence, holding back just short of obliterating his skull.

After the first two combos, Hookwolf went limp.

Alex made a mental note to remove Hookwolf from Hunter-level durability.

Looking outside, he saw that the woman had reinforcements. It was a man with red body armour and a visor covering the upper half of his face. The man flung himself backwards, bouncing off of the fallen PRT van with a speed that simply belied physics. He slammed into the tiger-masked man and sent him crashing into the ground a good six or so meters away.

Alex scoffed, then turned back to scoop up Hookwolf's unconscious body. Before tiger-mask could climb back to his feet, his boss' metal body slammed into him from down the street,

Neither of them got up again.

"Holy crap, you just beat an asshole with another asshole," the red-clad man said upon seeing Alex approach. "That was cool. Haven't seen anyone take down Hookwolf like that before. Are you a Brute? Striker?"

"Assault, calm down," the woman replied, joining "Assault". "You barely know the man." Then, she turned towards Alex. "Thanks for your assistance. This could have gone ugly without your help. What's your name?"

Her voice had a pleasant tone to it. A genuine curiosity that Alex wasn't sure how to respond to. He couldn't remember the last time anyone talked normally to him. Except for Ragland or Dana. The former was dead, while the latter…

Fuck, he had no idea how to handle this.

"Uh, yeah, I was just passing by," Alex mumbled. He couldn't help but notice that the third one, the girl, wasn't here. "Where's the last one? Girl with the scars?"

"Cricket?" Assault asked. "I think she ran away while we dealt with Stormtiger. Until you _dealt _with Stormtiger, of course."

"Don't worry," the woman chimed in. "We'll get her too."

Assault. Cricket. Stormtiger. All these…these second identities began to make sense. If you had helped put some Nazi fuck behind bars, you didn't want all their little Nazi friends to pay your family a visit. Was that why the heroes didn't kill the villains? To prevent lethal retribution?

Next, Assault approached Alex, holding out his hand. "Striker or Brute, doesn't matter. You kicked Hookwolf's ass and that puts you on my good side. Name's Assault. What's yours? Are you a Rogue or something?"

Alex stared at the extended hand, not sure what to do. These guys seemed alright, but he couldn't trust anyone here without first knowing the rules – without knowing what happened in Manhattan.

But he couldn't go around without at least identifying himself to the good guys, at least. He needed a name as well. Something that would keep the heroes off his back while also letting the villains know not to fuck with him.

After the shit that went down in Manhattan, he had something in mind.

"Call me Apex," he told the two heroes. "And I'm not stopping at Hookwolf."

With that, he leapt towards the nearest building and disappeared.

~0~

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**AN:**_ That was all for chapter three. Don't forget to drop a review or a PM if you liked this chapter. Stay safe out there and be good people!_


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